Captain's LogAs we make our way farther northwest, out of the South Pacific Ocean and into the Coral Sea, Picton Castle remains steady as she rolls through the larger swells, caused from the joining of the two seas. A rainy start to our day on board. This morning’s 4 – 8 watch were drenched but by […]
Picton Castle hove up anchor this morning from Rose Bay outbound for sea. We started our voyage to La Rochelle, France yesterday departing from our wharf in Lunenburg Harbour in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada a little after 3pm. We then anchored up for the night with a view to getting the crew one more night to get used to […]
We set sail from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada this afternoon, bound for La Rochelle, France to start the first passage of the Back-to-Back Transatlantics Voyage. It’s damp and foggy today, but the weather looks fair for the next few days. Thank you to everyone in Lunenburg who continues to support what we do. We love […]
Unexpectedly we spent another day anchored in Annapolis today. Starboard watch hopped the skiff to shore after breakfast while Port watch got busy with a few projects the Bosun had lined up. What I learned is that doing fine, detailed painting close to the waterline while in the skiff, on a day with a steady […]
By Kate “Bob” Addison As crew on Picton Castle you get pretty familiar with long ocean passages, two or three thousand nautical miles, maybe a month or so out of sight of land and often whole oceans between port visits – all pretty standard, pretty cool but no big deal. But it’s pretty novel to […]
The winds have come fair and started filling in again, so we’re back on course for St Helena making five knots in a glorious sailing breeze. We passed back into the Tropic of Capricorn yesterday evening and the air temperature is perfect at 25°C. SHIPS WORK: Sent down the strong fore upper topsail today and […]
By Chelsea McBroom April 20th, 2014 The Picton Castle couldn’t sit around waiting for the wind to pick up, so we motored for a couple of days, with fore and aft sails, until we found enough wind to carry us to Tonga. The day came and hands were called to go aloft and loose. The […]
By Captain John Beebe-Center April 15th, 2014 Sometimes you just know. Being at anchor at Palmerston Island presented some logistical challenges – primarily because one goes from no sounding to a coral reef in about 200 yards distance. The out fall of the lagoon and the prevailing Easterly breezes are what keep an anchored ship […]
By Chelsea McBroom March 19th, 2014 The Picton Castle arrived in Moorea in the early afternoon, just hours after sailing away from Papeete, and anchored in Cooks Bay. The water was brown with sediment and the current strong. Moorea is another very green lush island but with many peaks and the full sky of clouds […]
On the afternoon of January 26th the Captain held a lecture on ship handling. The rains had subsided that afternoon – and so the crew settled onto the quarterdeck to learn a thing or two. Primarily he discussed docking – a daunting and fascinating job. There are many factors one must account for including, but […]